hackney coach
- noun
- /ˈhæknɪ kəʊtʃ/
- Archaic
:
coche de caballos
- I offered to run down to the corner and bring back a hackney coach.
Examples
-
After an evening stroll, they decided to take a hackney coach back to their hotel, enjoying the ride through the city's charming streets.
-
It was my task, reader, to precede her down the stairs to the street in order to make sure that a hackney coach would be waiting at our door for her.
Fiction book (2001) -
In the bustling streets of Victorian London, we hired a hackney coach to transport us to the theater.
-
Even in the 19th century, one could easily find a hackney coach at the designated stands around the city, ready to take passengers wherever they needed to go.
Synonyms
4
5.1
A vehicle with four wheels like a carriage or taxi that people pay to use
A horse-drawn carriage that people hire like a taxi
A taxi allowed to pick up people on the street
A car you pay to take you where you want in a city
A small horse-drawn carriage people hire like a taxi in old Paris
How Modern
382
1.0
- UK
- UK
- Archaic
- Archaic
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'a horse-drawn carriage for hire' is directly and redundantly built from the constituents: 'hackney' (carriage for hire) and 'coach' (large horse-drawn carriage). This is a straightforward compositional combination following common vehicle + type patterns, so a B1 learner who knows both words would readily infer the MWE meaning despite its archaic register.
Etymology
Hackney coach comes from Hackney, a village near London where people kept horses to rent; a hackney was a horse you could hire and a coach was the four-wheeled carriage it pulled. So Hackney coach came to mean 'a carriage for hire' on the streets of old London.